Stormy Hall
by Hild Earnshaw
Summary: Stormy Hall is the story of a young farm girl who follows her heart to find true love. The story is set on the North York Moors in the second half of the Nineteenth Century during the ironstone mining boom. Stormy Hall is written in the autobiographical style of Jane Eyre and gives an intimate portrait of a strong minded girl faced with difficult choices in love and life.


**Forward**

This story is set in the North York Moors. The story is fiction, but the places are real and it is based on actual events. It was written for my own amusement when I lived in Africa to remind me of a part of England I love. The story originated from a map of the Moors I took with me to Africa and explored in my imagination. When I saw half remembered places with evocative names I began to wonder what secrets were hidden in the ruined walls and broken roofs of long abandoned farms. Rosedale is a real place, a small village on the Moors, but I have built it up as a fictional focus for my story, and Stormy Hall describes Rosedale as I imagine it to be, not as it is. Walkers with a good eye and a good map will be able to find the real places behind the fictional Stormy Hall, Midnight House, and Port Rosedale. There is a Stormy Hall Farm on the Moors, but it is not the setting for my story, I have taken its name and applied it to a much older farm now gone where a young farm girl really did rescue the crew of a stranded locomotive one dark and stormy night. I have used some dialect words in the text but I hope the meaning will be clear from the context. This is the first chapter, the original story which grew into a full length novel, loosely base on "Jane Eyre" and chapter two, "Midnight house" which continues the story of Hild Earnshaw after the fall of Stormy Hall will be the next chapter.

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**Chapter One**

I was born at Stormy Hall on the first day of March 1858 in the dark of the night in the midst of a blizzard. My mother Rose left the world as I entered it. We might have passed each other in the night as we both went through the door between this world and the next. I am sorry that we were going in different directions, her soul was going to the eternal light of Paradise, and my soul was going to Stormy Hall and the darkness of a winter's night on the moors. I am sure had we met she would have taken me with her and not left me to enter the world alone, but we passed like black cats on a dark night each following her own trail with no eye for the other and at 2am on that snowy windy morning I found myself on the cold floor of the draughty kitchen at Stormy Hall. I announced my arrival to the world with loud cries, I wanted my mother to hold me, to put me to her breast, but she couldn't hear, she was already as cold as the stone floor on which she lay, her dead eyes staring at the door to the yard looking for my father who never came. I wasn't entirely alone on that cold dark night though, and my cries were answered; Jess our old farm dog heard me crying and carried me to her basket, she kept me warm so I didn't die. She was a clever bitch; she had dropped five litters in her time and she mothered orphaned lambs in her basket in the kitchen every spring. She knew what to do.

My father was out that night bringing some ewes down from the moor. At Stormy Hall sheep always came first. Some of the ewes had dropped early and he had to find them before the lambs died in the snow. He was out all day in the blizzard searching for them, and he brought six back with him to Stormy Hall that night. When he got to the house he found me, the seventh, his own little lamb, lying with Jess in her basket sound asleep without a care in the world. He was a kind man who loved his wife and he would have been there for her if he had known but he wasn't expecting me, I was a month early; Rose had been making tea when her pains started. It was bad, there was no one around to help her and she just lay down in the corner and died like a cassen ewe. She wasn't strong like most farmers' wives, she was beautiful and fragile like a moth and that night the storm picked up her delicate soul and blew it out into the darkness. She hadn't the strength in her hands to cling on to life even for the sake of her new born bairn. Perhaps she thought I was already dead inside her when she started. That's what father thought when he first saw me, then I started to cry, a strong healthy cry, and he knew I was alive. He wrapped me in a dead lambs fleece, put me with all the other orphans, and gave me to the ewe to suckle like one of her own. Then he went out into the blizzard again and set to Temple Kirk to get help. He was a strong man, tough and silent like most farmers, and he didn't mind the weather no matter how hard it snowed.

When Mr Atkins the minister came next morning he found me still wrapped in the fleece, lying in the sheep shed next to the ewe, eyes wide open taking in the brilliant light of a sunny, snowy dawn. He named me Hild which is my first name after our brave saint of the moors because farmers prayed to her in times of trouble and he said she must have been watching over me that night. Father named me Jessica which is my second name after my real saviour, our farm dog, she wasn't a Saint but she was the first living thing I saw after I was born, and while she lived I always went to her first. She died when I was three and I cried for days afterwards, it was like loosing my mother all over again. Five bairns were born in the dale that winter and only I lived to see the spring. Mr Atkins said it was a miracle: I was born to a dead mother and nursed by a bitch and a ewe. Folk said it was a sign that could mean good or bad things for the Dale depending upon my character. When the snow cleared they all came to see me, give me silver coins, and cross themselves in front of me for good luck. They said I was a hobs child' I had magic in me; I would be able to speak to the flocks and listen to what they said. I would have power, and even then some of them thought I might be a witch and they were afraid to look into my eyes.

Father couldn't raise me on his own. He had the sheep to look after. He brought a woman from Whitby to be my wet nurse and look after the kitchen. She was called Mary, Mary Sowerby. She came to live with us at Stormy Hall on Easter Day 1858. She raised me for three winters and then father wed her and told me she was my new mother. She was thirty seven when she married father, nine winters older than him. She had been betrothed to a fisherman from Steers once, but he was drownded and she came to Stormy hall to get away from sea. She hated it for what it had done to her, because it took her man. Folk say she was carrying his bairn when he was lost, but it was born dead and she went all dree and dowley after that. She wasn't ever happy at Stormy Hall, not even on her wedding day. She wore black in the church and had beads of midnight stones round her neck. I never saw her smile, not even in the summer when the flowers were in the meadows and the lambs were jumping down by the beck. I knew she wasn't my real mother when I was in the cradle. Bairns naturally go to their own. I went to Jess in her basket, or to the sheep in the pen rather than to her. Father said Rose, my real mother, was beautiful with big brown eyes and red hair. Folk said I looked like her when I grew up and told me I was a real beauty. Mary was plain and she was jealous so she cut my hair short, never let me wear nice clothes, and I hated her even then before she hurt me.

I was born before the mines came and spoiled the Dale. The Dale was like a garden then; all the meadows were full of flowers in the springtime, and there were clear pools down in the beck where fish jumped and splashed in the shallows. I wasn't a bad girl, it was just I never liked working in the house; I would rather run with the flocks on the moor than work in the kitchen. Mary never liked me. She was always very mensful. Her family were old churchmen from Whitby and she always said girls belonged in the kitchen, but I didn't listen. I used to go down the bridge by the beck and tantle by pool at Falling Foss. I liked it there. Father told me there was a cave behind the Foss where the awfs (fairies) lived. There were always awf rings on the ings then. There were fish in the beck as well; smally brown trout that glisked in sun then douked down in the mirk when I tried to catch them. I caught asks (newts) and porriwiggles (tadpoles) and brought them home in a jar, and Mary scolded me and threw them on the midden. I wasted hours watching fleeing ethers (dragonflies) dart across the still water. Mary said I was lazy but she didn't sense me, she wasn't from the moors; they didn't speak to her the way they spoke to me. I was a moor child, the moors were good and clean then, there were bad things in towns that I didn't sense, but I always sensed the moors. I wasn't lazy, father knew I always worked hard with the sheep and I was as strong as any boy; it's just that I wasn't a housemaid like Mary and I was hefted to the moors not the kitchen.

Mr Atkins from Temple Kirk taught me to read the Bible at Sunday school when I was seven. He told me I was clever. I was proud of that, not many folk in the dale could read. Mary made me read the Bible every night before I went to bed, but I didn't like the bits she picked; her God wasn't a good shepherd, he was an angry old man, cursing and punishing the Israelites for what they did wrong. It was only later when Mr Atkins taught me about Jesus the good shepherd that I understood how folk were like sheep and needed watching otherwise they would get into trouble. Father taught me things that weren't in the Bible, things about the Dale: he told me about witches who could change into hares and suck the beastlings out of cows at night; about hempy hobs that lived in holes under bridges and fashed folk that happened by; about the Roman soldiers lost on Whinny Moor who still marched along the old road on dark winter's nights; about the Knights of Salem who built Stormy Hall and Temple Kirk and graved treasure under the house; about King Henry who had six daemes and doved in my room when he set across the moors on his way to York. Mary said it was all paddy nodding, but I knew it was all true, father sensed the dale like I did, he was born here at Stormy Hall. Mary's fore elders were cod heads (from Whitby) and she never sensed the dale and couldn't see the awfs, hobs and boggles that lived there. Father's bairnteam had more winters on the moor than any other folk in the dale, he knew there were old things out there, pit mirk spirits that could snatch your soul, he had seen the barguest, and he told Mary she shouldn't mell. She thought because she was from Whitby she knew everything, but all her learning counted for nothing at Stormy Hall on a winter's night in a blizzard.

On Sunday afternoons when Father was asleep in the parlour and Mary was in the kitchen I would climb out of the pantry window and go out on my own searching for the Knight's treasure. I thought if I found it I would be rich and have a fine house like Danby Castle and father could have servants and send Mary away, but I found nothing, not even one silver coin. When I got back she always made me clean the fires, or empty the midden as punishment for running away. She said there was no treasure, it was just a story, but I knew it was real, it was out there somewhere; maybe Mr Atkins had found it like some folk said and taken it to Temple Kirk, or maybe the miners had found when they dug the iron out of the ground. Father said the real treasure of the dale was the sheep. He said the Knights brought the sheep to the dale from Bethlehem and that they were the same sheep saw the star and came to the birth of Jesus in the stable. The year at Stormy Hall was set by the sheep. Ewes dropped their lambs in March or April, and then the followers set with their mothers all summer. Hogs went to market with smally ewes in the autumn, but best ewes stayed on the moor to keep the blood strong. The sheep were hefted to the land; they understood the moor and knew every place. The flock had been here longer than father's folk, longer even than the house itself. Father said if they left the house would fall like the temple in Jerusalem. By the time I was ten I worked with the sheep every day like a farm boy. I set with the dogs most mornings before sunrise looking for cassen stock and I helped with the marking and round up in September. Mary tried everything to make me a housemaid like her and she used to hit me with her stick when I wouldn't learn. She said I stupid and stubborn like a sheep but she was wrong. Sheep aren't stupid, they know the moor better than any farmer and can find places to shelter even in the worst blizzard. I liked sheep and went with them all the time to get away from her; I suppose it was the way I was born that made me like that. I was hefted to the moor like the flock. I knew every part of the rig and walked it every day with the ewes. Maybe I would be walking with them still if I hadn't been tempted like Eve. Maybe I brought the mines down on us because I went with him and forgot my own. Maybe it was the devil himself who tempted me like Mary said. I don't know, he was such a nice man that he couldn't have been the devil, he never hurt me like Mary did, may be it was just me, the darkness inside me coming out from my unnatural birth like Mary said. I don't know: even now after everything that happened I still love him and I can still remember how we met like it was yesterday…

It was January 1877. I was still a quiet farm girl then; I hadn't even been to Whitby, all I knew was the dale and the sheep. I thought Danby was the biggest place in the world, as big as London even. It was one of those winter's days that starve the life out of folk. I was out on Blakey Rigg at the back end of the day looking for twa gimmers that Father said had gone cassen. The loning cleughs were full of snow; and I was walking along the riggs where the snow had blown off when I saw it, a mirk shape in the drift. It was cassen like a ewe in a crush. There were no corves, only the stot. It had been trying to pace along the loning but the snow was too deep and it had got stuck. There were twa folk in beeld, the driver what was named Geordie and fireman what was named Jack. The fire was out and they were shoggling with the cald. They asked who I was and where I set from: I said Stormy Hall was gain and they had better come with me if they didn't want to die in the night. It was pit mirky then and the wind was blowing strong. I told them they had to set with me to the house now afore it was too late, so they put on their thick happings and set with me to Stormy Hall and that was the fore end of it.

Stormy Hall was like a ship at sea in a tempest when we came on it: a small safe place in the howling darkness. I saw the light in the back window first shining faintly through the blizzard and guided them to it along the old road and took them through the back door into the kitchen. Father was sitting in the corner by the fire and he was surprised to see me come in from the night with two strangers.

"Now our bairn, what have you brought here, they don't look much like gimmers to me."

Mary was stirring the pot on the fire.

"Close the door girl, have you no sense, before half the snow on the moor comes in."

We never used names much then, father called me our bairn, Mary just called me girl, and Geordie and Jack called me Stormy after our house, their refuge on that wild dark night. They said they were all frit when they saw me in the cleugh, they must have thought I was a waft or a boggle come to get them. I was wearing a greet dark cloak with a hood so they never saw my face until we got to the house. They told father what had happened straight away, how they were stuck in the snow, and how his son had saved them, then I took off my hood and they both said together: "He's a girl!"

Father just grumbled:

"You boys oughtn't been out in the snow on you own keeping our bairn from her work. That's twa gimmers you've cost me."

Geordie said he thought I was an angel when I came out of the snow. He called me his heroine, his Grace Darling, his saviour from an icy grave and kissed my hand till I blushed fire red, then they took off their wet happings and went to sit by the fire in the parlour. I told them I was named Hild and I was called after a saint. Geordie told me he was named after George Stephenson, a brave engineer, and Jack was named after the Baptist in the Bible. Happen Geordie must have been younger than father by ten winters or more and Jack was less. I never found the gimmers; they died in the snow, I found the serpent in the garden instead, or that's what Mary said. She never had any time for men after her man was lost and she would have sent them away if she could but the snow was too bad so they had to stay and that was that. They slept in the parlour and Mary took all the best silver out of the cabinet and locked it in the chest in the kitchen afore she went to bed. Father said it would have been better if I had saved the gimmers than saved the men, sheep were worth something, men were worth half nought; they supped our ale, ate our bread, and burned our coals. Farmers are grosers, that's how they are set. I don't think he really meant it.

Next day the weather was bright and Geordie and Jack walked along the railway to Bank Top and I didn't think I would ever see them again but I was wrong. They were strangers to the Dale and strangers never came back, not afore the railway came anyway. The railway was new then and I didn't sense that it had come to stay. The trains went along it every day. It soon became as much a part of the Dale as the sheep on the moor only it was different – it didn't work with the land, it worked against it cutting through hills and leaping across dales on big banks of earth. The railway was like the work of giants who lived on the moors long ago and hurled stones at each other when they got angry leaving deep holes and strange mounds to mark their passing. It was built to carry iron from the new mines in the Dale to the staithes at Port Rosedale. Iron was worth a lot of money, more than sheep, more than wool, more than farms, perhaps even more than folk. When they found iron in Dale everything changed: strangers came to build the railway and stayed to work in the mines. They were the first outsiders most folk had ever seen; they fast talked in strange voices, they were all men, they had no families, no women or children, they were always fighting and drank a lot. Mary said they were demons who would burn for eternity in the fires of hell. I don't think they were worried about that; they had already burned in the fires of Rosedale working down the mines and in the ironworks. The farmers didn't go to Rosedale any more after they came, not since a miner broke young Sheriff's sons arm with a stave, they stayed out of the town and went to Danby or Farndale instead, they didn't like mixing with foreigners. At first it was nowt to us at Stormy Hall at the top of the Dale. They built the great bank across top of the Dale and trains passed the house every day but they never stopped and we were soon used to them, they were like clouds in the sky which made a dark shadow in the fields and then were gone. Even the sheep stopped running away from them. It was different in Rosedale. When the mines opened hundreds of strange folk came to the village. Mary said they were the devils spawn; bad men, drunkards and worse, and stayed in the house most of the time in case they came across the Rigg. Then the mines started eating the land; they took Sheriffs' House and graved out all the iron from under the fields leaving the land scudded and bare like a sheep after shearing. Rosedale beck went ketty and ran blood red with muck from the mines. The mines even came to our Dale. Father was Frey the Dale would be spoiled like Rosedale, but he wouldn't sell the farm even when they offered him twice what it was worth. Mary said he should. They argued about it all the time; she wanted to go and live in a bright house with a garden in Danby but he wouldn't sell, not even for all the Knight's gold he said. Less than two winters after railway came Stormy Hall stood alone, the only house in the Dale. Father just scrattled on, it were only thing he could do, he couldn't insense why they wanted all the iron; he said it was worth half nought except to the railway. We didn't have much use for iron at Stormy Hall, just for the yetlings in kitchen. Father said sheep were only thing that would last in the Dale. Everything else would go like melting snow at end of winter. Iron wasn't permanent like sheep he said, it weren't alive, and mines gave nothing back to the land, they were just dark holes in the ground which ate up men and beasts.

The Railway set iron out of the Dale and brought the plague in. That's what some Mary said anyway. Father blamed the hobs, whenever there were trouble he said they were at the fore end of it, that was for certain. They didn't like trains crossing their land, the drivers never asked permission to cross beck like dales folk so the hobs were certain to be fash he said. One night at the back end spring I was out with Father checking ewes when we heard a noise like the hunt after a fox in night. It was the Gabriel-Ratchet, the walking dead, calling the living to join them. Father covered my ears and we hid in the ling and didn't dare move. We were cold if they set on us. It was a sign. By morn plague had smitten the Dale. At the month end half of the folk in Rosedale were dead, killed by the plague, and buried in a great pit at Cold Harbour. The mines closed and the trains stopped running. I was Frey Geordie and Jack would get it, more than I was Frey we would get it at Stormy Hall. We were safe; the Gabriel Ratchet had passed over us. Mr Atkins said it was caused by bad air from mines so Father wouldn't let me out of the house till it was gone. He still went for the sheep same as usual though; he said the air on the moor was still good and he would be all right. He painted a cross of sheep's blood on the door like it said in the Bible and the angel of death passed over us just like it passed over the Children of Israel in Egypt. When I told Mary about the Gabriel Ratchet she said I was a heathen girl and slapped my face, but she weren't there on the moor that night, they were there and I heared them. All other houses that were left were smitten, Sheriff's House especially. Old Sheriff and two of his sons were taken, that's why young Sheriff let the mines take the house: after the plague he said it was no place, it was ban and folk couldn't live there any more. After the mines had taken the iron it would be deaf, no good to anyone, and he left the Dale and never came back. I went Old Sheriff's' graving at Temple Kirk. Father told me Temple Kirk was built by the Knights with stones from Salem. There were no bad air there. Folk who were graved there would be at rest he said, it were sacred ground, not like Cold Harbour. Folk graved at Cold Harbour would have no peace; they would walk the land till the end of the world and run with the Gabriel Ratchet across Whinny Moor on cold dark nights. Mr Atkins read the words from the Bible and we all sang The Wake over the grave while coals burned in the hole to drive their souls out of the bodies to heaven. I liked Old Sheriff and his sons. I prayed they would be set by angels over Whinny Moor and lit a candle for them in the Kirk window in case they got lost in the night on their way to Paradise.

Geordie and Jack weren't smitten. They lived at Bank Top and no one got it there. It was right on edge of moor where the air was good and clean. A week after the plague passed I was cruke huked at the crossing when they passed with a train to Ingleby Top. I was atop the Mere Stone looking at the sea and they waved as they passed. I loved looking at sea. Maybe I liked it 'cos Mary hated it so much. The sea was so far away and so fairlies. Mr Atkins said it went on for ever to the end of the world, hundreds and hundreds of miles, and told me stories about whales and sea monsters louping and douking in its dark waters. He told me how Jesus had walked on the waters and calmed the storm. He said Jesus' disciples were fishers and Jesus made them fishers of men. Mary never told me about Jesus, just about the punishment and damnation that was waiting for sinners like me; she never talked about happy things. I was still atop the stone when the train set back to Bank Top. They stopped and set down beside me with the whistle blowing like a great bird. Geordie said I was the bravest of brave lasses, kissed me on the hand, and I went all blate. He was tall and conny with big hands and a gotherly face. I weren't much to look at then with my hair cropped short and my farmer's breeks and boots, but he kissed my hand like I was a real lady in a pretty dress. Then they set back to Bank Top and said they would see me again next time they passed. I always waited for them after that. They always shriked their whistle when they set by, but it weren't till amid summer they stopped again. Geordie said he wanted to take pictures of me and that's how I really got haunted with him.

Geordie's recreation was making pictures. He asked father if he could bid me to make photographs with him. He told me he was a photographer; I never insensed photography. I knew about drawing, sometimes after Kirk on Sundays Mr Atkins let me copy pictures from the big Bible he read the Word out of, but photographs were different from drawings, they were real and looked like they were alive, like magic. Geordie said photography wasn't magic; it was a way of making pictures with science. It sounded very flow. He set to our house back end of one Saturday and told we all about it. He walked along the loning from Bank Top and bid the night at Stormy Hall. Aback supper he cruked in the best chair in ingle, reek'd a pipe, and showed father some photographs by Mr Sutcliffe of Whitby. He talked all about photography and making pictures. Father didn't insense photography at all, but he liked the pictures and he couldn't see any harm in it, so he bid Geordie to make the pictures and the next Saturday morn I put on my best happings and we all set along loning to Bank top – Father, Mary, and me all together. It was a canty day out for us all. Father was maddled to see all the stour in the Dale, all the mines scudding the fields. Even in the Sun the Dale looked all deaf and dowley with all the brash everywhere. I was right frey when I saw it, but Father just shook his head and said he couldn't see the point of it all, spoiling the Dale just to get iron. There would be nothing left for the sheep to eat, no grass; the Dale was just like a big midden. No good would come from it he said.

Bank Top was where the railway ended. There was a great big byre with space for more than a hundred beasts. Inside it was all reek and ass. There were round windows at one end like the Kirk, but it was more like Old Scrat's house than the Kirk full of fire and brimstone. I was all Frey at first and wouldn't go in, but Geordie just laughed and said the trains were just big kettles full of water with a fire at the bottom to make steam, just like our kitchen. Mary coughed and said loudly her kitchen wasn't like that, all dirty and full of ash. He set us to his house after we had seen the byre. There were a special room there for making pictures. It was coloured all white with big windows. He showed us his camera, it were a smally box an eye at one end that made pictures on a glass. The pictures were all upside down when I put the cloth over my head and looked at them but Geordie said they'd be right way up when they were finished. Then he made a picture while Father and Mary watched. Most of time his head was under a black cloth and I had to cruke still for quarter of an hour while the picture was being finished. Then he went into a little mirk room with no windows to fix the picture while we all had tea. The picture was beautiful, like a magic mirror that had caught my reflection and made it fast. I looked into the box to see how it was done but there were nothing inside. Maybe there were hobs or awfs inside when the picture was made and they had escaped when the box was opened. I thought they might be in the little mirk room and went to have a look just in case but there was nothing, just lots of jars and bottles like the pharmacy in Danby. Geordie bid us to stay with him at Bank Top for the night, but we had to set back to Stormy Hall to see to the sheep. When we set back along lonnings it was getting dark; there were fires burning along the Dale all the way back to the rigg, it was like a funeral, the fleet at a graving. Father stopped at Blakey House for Ale and told all the folk there about the photograph. Old Blakey said photographs were like wafts, they took your soul and that got me all frey. We didn't talk after that, just set fast back to Stormy Hall and I put my head under the bed happens with my fingers in my ears when I went to bed just in case a waft came for me.

Next morning I went to see Mr Atkins. He told me photographs were not wafts, and had no harm in them. He showed me how his eyeglass made a picture on some paper when he held it up to the window. I felt much better after that. The day was sunny and warm, the grass was green, the lambs were calling for their mothers, and my fley during the night seemed just like fondness. Next Saturday I set to Geordie's house on my own. He took me in the train; it went faster than a galloping horse and shoggled from side to side all the way. Folk waved and sheep boggled as we set past Blakey House. When we reached Bank Top Geordie set me to straight to his house, and made more pictures, and we talked a lot about photography and science. When I set back to Stormy Hall I didn't notice the mines or fires, I was looking at Geordie all the way. I had never met anyone like him before; I was fixed on him from that moment on.

I went to his house every Saturday after that when Father let me off for the afternoon. I used to wait at the crossing for a train to set by. I got to know all of the train men; mostly they were young men like Geordie and Jack, they weren't from dales, they were from York or Newcastle and they travelled with railway like Egyptians (Gypsies). Geordie set from Newcastle; he told me he was set on working on the railway ever since he first saw a train when he was three. I told him I couldn't remember the first time I saw a sheep, I was new-born in my cradle when the ewe suckled me, Mary said I was part sheep myself. I never thought about being a shepherd, I never thought about being anything, I was like the sheep on the moor, born to it; there didn't seem to be a choice, that was the way things were. Geordie told me all about trains, how water boiled, how steam was the strongest force in the world. I thought about what was coming in the Dale and it scared me and I started to cry. Maybe steam was stronger than the moors, stronger than the wind and the rain, stronger even than God, and the mines and railway would destroy everything in the word. Geordie pulled me close to him and said steam wasn't stronger than the Moors and the railway wasn't stronger than the snow on Blakey Rigg and said had I forgotten how I had saved him. Sheep were stronger than steam; they could find their way in the snow when trains couldn't and that was a fact no mistake, He said the trains weren't living things, like sheep or lambs; they were machines, they only went where folk wanted them to go, like horses pulling a cart. They couldn't destroy the world if folk didn't want them to. I said I didn't want them to destroy Stormy Hall and Geordie promised me they wouldn't. He said the men gave the trains names and got fond of them like horses so I shouldn't be scared. The engines at Bank top were called Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter. Geordie's engine was winter. I learned the sounds of their whistles like a dog learns the sound of his shepherd's call, and when I heard the sound of Winter's whistle I came running.

Geordie lived with his sister at Bank Top. She was a dressmaker and she gave me different dresses to wear for the photographs. I didn't dress up much then, just for church on Sundays, and I felt like a real lady wearing all those fancy clothes. Geordie told me all about Newcastle, how it was a brave city with fine buildings. He said the streets were all lit at night by lots of lamps which shone like stars and he promised he would take me there one day. I told him all about the moors, where the hobs and awfs lived and how he had to ask permission every time he crossed the beck. I showed him the awf rings we found in the low field by the river. We set there one Sunday afternoon and I told him all about awfs; how they came out on special nights like Midsummer's Eve, and how we left gifts for them at Falling Foss at Christmas. Father said if you set on them and they didn't see you it would bring you good luck. I said I would take Geordie to see them next Midsummer but I never did, everything went wrong before I got the chance…

That summer were very hot. One Sunday I set with Geordie down by pool in the beck at Falling Foss. I was so happy I went swimming. I were very fond then, I just louped in wearing my best white dress and lay in the water like a swan. Geordie didn't swim, he just reek'd his pipe and glinted me through the trees. When I think of it now I go all tharfish, but I lited him then. When I came out he said I should doff my happins and lay them on the bushes to dry. I did it without thinking, country girls were like that, all innocent, then I saw him glooring at me and I went all red. He said I was beautiful like a picture; all smally and delicate like, but with good strong doups for dropping bairns; he said I would make some man a good daeme and I went even more red. I never thought of myself like that before, and I went all swaimish and tried to hide in the pool, but he took my hand and pulled me out and told me to stand in the sun until I was dry. He said going bare was nothing to be shamed of. Men and women were God's beautiful creations he said and making pictures of people bare was the highest form of art and he old me about brave artists like Michelangelo who made pictures of

lots of folk, lads and lasses all bare. They were called life pictures he said. Then I got dressed and we set back to Stormy Hall to have supper with Father and Mary. My dress was all marked with grass; I said I had fallen over in meadow and it was an accident, but Mary got angry and said I was just careless. She said if I behaved like a farm boy I should dress like one and I had to wear breeks to church for the next month until she forgot about it.

The next Saturday I went to Blowath Crossing after the sheep were sorted. Geordie said he would meet me there but he didn't come. I waited till almost noon then I heard the whistle. They had run down some sheep aback West House and they had go and tell Young West about it. Geordie was very glad to see me and said he thought I might have gone home. We set straight for Bank Top and went to his house. When we got there he asked if he could make a life picture of me and I said he could. It were a warm sunny day with the sun shining brite in the photography room. He got the camera ready and I took off my happins and sat perfectly still while he made the picture. He said I was beautiful like a awf princess. That made me very happy; Mary always said I looked like a rough farm lad with my hair cut short and my rough hands. We talked a bit and then I put on my breeks an cloak and set back to Stormy Hall. Old Blakey gave me water when I passed and asked if I had been to see the photographer. I said I hadn't and that I was just out for a walk. He said I should be at home in kitchen with my mah. I got angry and said she wasn't my mah, my mah was dead, and walked away afore he could say any more. He was always grue just like Mary; folk didn't go to his house to be happied. Geordie showed me the picture he made the next week, I thought I was all femmer like a sheep after shearing but he said it was perfect, like Eve in the Garden of Eden. There was a picture of Eve in Mr Atkins' Bible, she were all thin and white and I did look a bit like her I think. He said he wanted to make some more and I said he could if he liked.

I appointed to see Geordie again at the back end of next week. Father and Mary went to Temple Kirk as usual, but I said I was dwalmish and wouldn't go. Geordie came when they were away and I set with him to Falling Foss. It were a right warmy day and we both doffed our happins and blashed around in the pool by the fall. The water was icy, straight off moor, and soon I was shoggling with cold so Geordie hugged me up and lidd'd me down on the warm grass. We toited about in the meadow like a pair of spring lambs and then he came to me like a tup to a ewe and I got frit and ran away. He came after me and I fell down in the grass; I wasn't a lad louper, but all of a sudden I came over all ranty and was fain to have him. I bent down like a bitch and lifted my doup to him. My legs were open and I felt him inside me all stiff and strong. I was brazened, tupped in the Ings like a gimmer. If any folk had happened upon us it would have been bisen, but I wanted it, it wasn't forced, it were my will not his. Afterwards we lay in the lound of the afternoon and I started crying everything seemed so beautiful. Then I heard the Kirk bells ring and had to run to get to the house before Father and Mary got back. When Father tupped the ewes he always painted the ram so that we knew which ones had been served. When I got back I was all shoggling and breathless. I knew I was marked. I was sure Father would know, but he said nowt. I wanted to get away from them so I said I was still dwalmish, and went to my room, and lay on my bed crying and thinking good thoughts about how we would be married and have lots of bairns, but that wasn't what happened. I would have cried a lot more if I had known then what did happen.

Geordie never tupped me again after that. He told me he was sorry and he shouldn't have done it like he did but I didn't care, I was maddled with him. I met him again the next week on Saturday afternoon and he told me he would ask Father if he could marry me as soon as I was old enough. He had his camera with him and we walked together along the beck. The water was shining and the birds were sounding and it seemed like Paradise I was so happy. He said he had never taken pictures outside his house before and he didn't know how they would turn out. The camera was big and heavy and he had walked along the railway all the way from Bank Top carrying it on his shoulder. I said he must make a real life picture of me and doffed my clothes and stood bare in the warm sunshine next to a tree like Eve in Mr Atkins Bible.

It was the last perfect day of the summer; next morning the wind turned to a cold airt and when I happened by the beck it was all ketty with mine water and the fish were dead. I was all dree and dowly then; I thought it was my fault; I had garred it because of what I did like Eve in the Garden of Eden. Then I heard a train's whistle, and ran to the crossing. I got there just in time and swooned across the metals panting for breath. The train stopped; It was Geordie, he picked me up and I told him what I had seen, about the beck being poisoned, and how we would never be able to go there ever again. I was blethering like a bairn, the sky was dark with the hag coming down the rig, and I felt like I wanted to die. He hugged me into the beeld and put me on top of the roof. I could see across the top of the moors all the way to Whitby and Port Rosedale and I saw the sun shining on the sea at the edge of the world. Geordie said the sea was pure clean water that would never be spoiled. He said it had mermaids, awfs like fish with beautiful hair and big tails, and huge whales in it. He said he would take me there soon and sent me back to Stormy Hall to tell Father about the beck.

When I got back to Stormy Hall I felt sick and went to bed early without any supper. Later in the pit mirk of the night I was doving and thought ah heard a Jenny Howlet calling. I woke with a start and listened. I knew it was Winter's whistle. I ran in my sark to the crossing. I was soaked with sweat and shoggling with the cold when I got there. Geordie was waiting for me. He hugged me up beside the fire in the beeld. and told me he was going to take me to the sea just like he promised. The Dale was filled with hag when we set for Ingleby Top and I looked out over a sea of cloud lipping in the darkness as we ran fire flaught through the night. We went slow down Ingleby Bank and douked into the cloud like fishers diving into the beck and then ran fast across the dark meadow to Port Rosedale. I waited on the staithe while the couves were unloaded and shackled together in a great line. Geordie wrapped his jacket around me and we went and walked on the sands while the waves lipped and plashed around us. There was fire in the water, little lights that sparkled like stars in the sky, cold and distant and so beautiful. Then Geordie said it was time to go, and we set back to Bank Top afore it were light. The first fires of morning had just started to drive the stars from sky as we cluntered throwing black smoke from chimney up Ingleby Bank. The courves shrieked as we went past West House and then I saw Stormy Hall sitting amell a pool of purest white hag in the moonlight. I have never seen anything so perfect, like a fairy tale castle. The couves shoggled and banged as we stopped at the crossing, then Geordie hugged me down from the beeld, took a packet from his coat and gave it to me. I ran quickly back to Stormy Hall before Mary got up to light the fires and went quiet up the stairs to my bedroom. I sat on bed and opened the packet with shaking hands; it was a picture of him and winter at the crossing. There were wring on the back, it said "To my Sleeping Beauty, until I come and get you on my shining charger…" I doved as soon as I was under my twilt and when I woke up the rain was beating against my bedroom window and the Dale were dark and dowley. I remembered the trip to the sea and I thought it had all been just a dream, but there was sand in my bed, coal dust on my Sark, and the picture was under my pillow so it must have been true. It did really happen.

Father always tupped the ewes in the autumn. He brought in a tup and put it in the Ings with the ewes and let it have its way. He always said the Ings was good for tupping. He left presents there for the awfs, small silver coins and bright shiny things and they were good to him. They made sure all the ewes had twin lambs. There was magic in the Ings then and I should have insensed what would happen. I found out I was carrying at All Hallows. Father smelt it on me first, just like he did on a ewe, there was no difference he said. He knew it was Geordie what tupped me and asked if he forced me. I said no, I was fain for him to do it. Mary took me up to my bedroom and beat me with her stick, harder than she had ever done before until I was greeting like ewe that had lost a lamb. Then she shut me in the dark place under the stairs and I heard her arguing with Father about the bairn, shouting that I had shamed her, and disgraced the family. Next morning she let me out and told me I couldn't see Geordie ever again. She said I must have been oaf rocked to do what I did, I was a fondy, a donnet, a whore, and Old Scrat would have me. Her bairnteam were strong in the Kirk and they all talked that way, especially when they were angry, and she was very angry then. She said to make it red she would fele me and put me back in the dark place under the stairs. I wasn't her daughter she said, I could live there from now on. It was dark and it had no windows. Father put a straw mattress in it for me to sleep on but I never slept there, it was dirty and all the spiders and beetles came out in the night and crawled in my hair. I cried every night after that but it was no good. Mary didn't care, she were only worried about herself and what folk in Whitby would think. Lots of unwed girls in the Dales had bairns then, it were usual in the high farms on moor edge, but she weren't from the Dales, she didn't know. She told me I was just like dirt under her broom; she said no one wanted a bastard or its donnet of a mother, if she had her way she would pitch me on the midden with the rest of the gripe she said, I belonged with the muck. She made Father tell Geordie I had set to live with my Aunt in Whitby and gone into service. She took letters from him and made me watch while she burnt them unopened. I could still hear the trains whistling when they passed but I was locked up and I couldn't go to the crossing and tell Geordie what had happened. I tried so hard to escape but it was no good, Mary watched me all the time and made me scrub the kitchen floor and wash the walls to make up for what I had done. She wanted rid of me and the bairn and she knew how to do it, there were women in the Dales who could. One night Old Howdy came from Danby. Some folk said she were a witch but what she did weren't magic or part of the old art. It were just cruelty and pain. She drouked me with her potion and I went into a cold fit, all lead and lifeless like a dead lamb. I was cassen and couldn't move. They carried me to the kitchen table and put a great pin inside me; I wanted to scrike, to cry out but I couldn't, I was leathe. There was a terrible pain, like a red hot iron, and I thought I was dying. I don't remember anything properly after that except that when I woke up in the morning I was back in my room and I knew the bairn was gone, it was dead. They had killed it.

That winter was one of the worst I can remember; the snow came just after Old Howdy killed my baby and by the end of the day it was heaped high against the walls of Stormy Hall, almost up to the bottom of my window. The trains stopped running and the mines closed it was so bad. When I thought about what they had done and how I had been lost the bairn I wanted to die; I lay awake at night listening to the wind routing in the chimneys and thought how I could kill myself but it was no good, I couldn't hang myself or cut my wrists with the kitchen knife because she watched me all the time. I opened the windows to my bedroom every night and lay bare on my sheets trying to starve myself to death. I wouldn't eat and gave my crowdy to the cuddys that shivered on my windowsill every morning but it was no good, I was too strong, I wouldn't die. Mary said I had to live so I could be punished for what I had done, so I could go on the streets in Rosedale, sell myself to miners, get old and ugly afore my time, go mad with the pox and die in the gutter. Kiss'mass day came and went with no change in the weather. Mary kept me clowing all day cleaning the fires in the kitchen and I had bread and water for supper as usual. We had no visitors. The other houses in the dales were empty. The mines had taken them and the sheep were gone, slaughtered, so there were no folk nearby to bid with us. Father tried to bring our flock down but more than half were cassen and lost in the snow. The weather got worse in January, starving cold with gales that made sad music in the ice shoggles hanging from the house chimneys. Father got all dowly after Old Howdy came, he just crook huked with the sheep in the barn while Mary stayed in the house with me, hitting me all the time because the kitchen floor wasn't clean enough for her, or if there were webs in the corners. I wasn't locked under the stairs any more, Mary took everything out of my room and put a straw mattress in, it was all I deserved she said. There was no reason for what she did, for her to keep hurting me, the bairn was gone, nobody in Whitby knew what I had did, and it could have been kept secret. That was the Dales way but she hated me so much she just kept on hurting me, and in the snow there was no where I could go.

Father kept going out looking for the flock what were lost on moor. One day he went out and never came back. He never spoke to Mary again after she killed my bairn, Old Howdy put the pin into me, but it was Mary who told her to do it, it was Mary's fault, she was to blame, it was all Mary's fault. Before he left and got lost Father came into my room and told me he was sorry and then he went out in the snow to be with the sheep and never came back. He was always happiest with the sheep; I hope there are sheep in heaven, Mr Atkins says Jesus was the good shepherd so I think there must be. His body was never found and his bones are still there out on the moors with the flock. I cried when he didn't come back, and I hated the thought of him walking Whinny Moor or running with the Gabriel Ratchet. He were a good man. Mary didn't greet or blether when he was lost, she just kept me working and said nothing about what happened. I still had terrible pains but she wouldn't give me anything for them, she said it were my punishment from God for being a donnet and a whore. I blamed her for Father getting lost, he did it to get away from her, it was her fault, it was all her fault, and it twisted my mind and made me think dark things. I forgot all about Geordie, I just wanted to get her back for what she had done. I wanted to hurt her like she had hurt me.

The weather broke just before Easter, it started to pule in the night and by the morning the snow was all plashy and beck was full to overflowing. As soon as it was clear Mary set to West House and didn't come back before it got dark. I was all arfish. I thought she had gone for men to take me to Rosedale and make me a whore like she said. That night I couldn't sleep. I built up all the fires but the house was full of noises and shadows and I was sick and scared. I thought I heard a bairn crying in the night behind the door under the stairs and I was afraid it was a waft coming to get me and take me to Hell like Mary said. She came back with Old West in the morning and they talked a lot about Stormy Hall and how it would have to be sold to the mines now that Father was dead. I shouted that he wasn't dead, that he would come back, but she just looked at me with a terrible face and said she would settle with me later. She didn't speak to me again after that and went straight to her bedroom when Old West left. My pains were worse than ever that night and I sat in the kitchen while the fire slowly went out and the house got cold and dark. I don't remember when I got up the strength to do it, but it was late, in the darkest hour of the night, my time; the fires were all out and the house was cold and damp. I crept up the stairs to her bedroom; the door wasn't shut properly so I opened it quietly and went in. She was sound asleep in the big double bed, my mother's bed, with the her twilt pulled up, lying on her back routing like a beast with her mouth wide open. I took a clean white pillowcase and pushed it into her mouth; she started to kick and joul like a ram at gelding, but I held her tight and kept the breath from her till she was dead It was as simple as that. I was much stronger than her. I spoke to her and whispered my name in her ear while I held her, so she knew that I killed her. Then I took her dead weight, hoisted her up in a snickle from the lamp hook, and set her swinging like the pendulum in the big clock in the hall .That's how they found her in the morning after I ran scriking to West House and they set back with me to see what had made me mad. They thought she hanged herself because father was lost. They didn't know what really happened, nobody knew what really happened, I never told anyone about it till now.

Mary was buried the day after she died, hasty, because folk were scared of suicides. Mr Atkins wouldn't grave her at Temple Kirk because she was a self-killer so she was put in the ground on the moor at Cold Harbor. It was a dowly place, deaf, dark and barren; nothing grew there. Folk said it was where the Roman Soldiers were lost, and where they walked again on pit mirk nights when there were no moon. Folk wouldn't go there after dark. They dropped her quickly into the hole they dug with no words, no songs, no candle to light her on her way to paradise no box to bury her in; just a stake through her heart and a great stone on her face so she couldn't see who put the wet black peat over her. Everyone was fley for me, an orphan with nowhere to go except Stormy Hall, a house cursed by evil. They all gloored at me and crossed themselves when I passed. They were sure I would be next. I was alone at Stormy Hall now and its ban was mine. I set back to the house on my own; nobody would come with me, not even Old West, because it was after dark and they were sure Mary would be waiting there for me swinging from the hook. They didn't know what I had done or they would have put me in the hole with her. When I reached the house the fires were lit and the parlour was warm and welcoming. She hadn't come, she was pinned in the cold wet ground and wouldn't be free until the stake rotted.. I wrapped my great cloak around me and crook huked in the best chair in the ingle. The house was quiet; there were no noises, no shadows and I slept peacefully in the chair. When I woke up the sun was shining and the fires were out. I knew what I was had to do. The flock were gone, the house had to fall. Father said that was the way it would happen, he wanted me to do it. She wouldn't have it, there would be no place for her at Stormy Hall, ever, I would send her back to walk the moor at Cold Harbour for all eternity for what she had done. I poured fire eldin from the lamps over all the floors and stairs in the house and lit it. I ran round the rooms lighting everything. The house was soon afire; and when I ran away down the old gate to the crossing I heard the roof collapse and the beams break, but I didn't look back. I was going to Bank Top, I would find Geordie, and everything would be all right; Mary was dead. I had my revenge and it was sweet at that time, but not later when I knew what I had done and how I would suffer for it…

**Cleveland Dialect Word List**

Aback – behind, in the rear

Abide – to endure

Ablins – perhaps

Amaist – almost

Amang – among

Amell – between

Arf, arfish – afraid

Awf – a fairy

Back end – at end

Bain – near or easy

Ban – a curse

Barguest – animal spirit

Beal – bellow like a cow

Behint – behind

Be out – without

Beyont – beyond

Bid – invite

Big - build

Bisen - offensive show

Blate – shy

Blether – cry like a child

Bolk – vomit

Bowdy kite – impudent child

Brassened – without modesty

Brave – of good quality

Canty – cheerful

Cassen – unable to rise

Clam – starve

Clow – work laboriously

Clunter walk heavily

Crowdy – porridge

Cuddy – hedge sparrows

Daddle – confused esp old age

Densh –fastidiuos

Dawl – tire

Dame – wife

Deaf – barran unproductive

Ding - thrust violently

Doory – diminutive

Douk – bow down

Donnet – worthless person

Doup – buttocks

Dove – to dose

Dowly – heavy with sorrow lonely and melancholy

Dree – to endure

Dwalm – swoon

Dwine – pine away

Efter – after

Endland – forwards

Endus-progress

Enow – enough

Fain very willing

Farlies – unusual strange wonderful

Fele – hide

Femmer slender

Fire fanged – fierce

Flicker – flutter

Flags – flakes

Fley – terrify

Flowther – excited nervous

Fond – simple foolish

Fore elders – ancestors

Fore end – start

Frack – bold

Fratch – squabble angrily

Frem – strange

Gain – direct

Gar – to cause

Glint – a glimpse

A short glance, something scary

Glisk – glisten

Gloore – stare with fixed look

Gotherly – kind

Graith – equipment

Hag – white fog or mist

Handsel – do for first time

hankle – entangle

happen –to meet

hug – to carry

inoo – now

insense – understand

iv – in

jowl – shake roughly

keck – choke

ketty – putrid

kizen – dry

lait – search

leathe – make soft and pliant

letten – light

lillilow – bright flame

lite – to trust

lound – still calm quiet

loup leap

maddle – confuse or bewilder

mair – more

mell – meddle

mensful – of good conduct

mint –intend

mun – must

nafflw – idle about

nodder – tremble or shake

no nation – strange remote

nowther – neither

owther – eitherpase – to force as a door

pash - smash

perishment – a severe cold

plough day – 1st Monday after 12th night

ram fetid

ranty – wild with excitement

ream – shout

red – set right

renty = tall and athletic

roke – thick fog

rout – bellow like cattle

scraffle – struggle

scrike scream

semmand = slender yielding

set - accompany on journey

slaister – to a thing idly

slem – untrustworthy

smally – little puny

starved – suffer from extreme cold

stour – dust in motion

tantle = dawdlw

tharfish – reluctant shy

toit – lark about

twattle = caress fondle

unbethink – remember

waft wraith apparition


End file.
